From the Turks and Caicos to Dubai, the world's best beaches could this summer become the theatre for an increasingly bitter battle that threatens to split global sport. The fear of football's governing bodies, players' unions and agents is that it will not be long lenses bothering the likes of Wayne Rooney and Frank Lampard during a summer free of international action, but the spectre of missing a drug test under the new World Anti-Doping Agency code.

The so-called "whereabouts" rule, which will apply to football in this country from 1 July, requires a pool of elite athletes in every sport to state where they will be for an hour every day of every week. It will apply to a pool of between 20 and 25 "elite" players – probably based on the England squad – who, if they are not where they say they will be at the appointed time, will be given one "strike". Scotland will have its own elite testing pool but Wales will not. Three missed tests in 18 months will lead to an automatic ban of at least a year.

Although most of the top players are already being tested regularly – the England captain, John Terry, has been tested 14 times this season at international, European and domestic club level according to the Professional Footballers' Association chief executive, Gordon Taylor – there are concerns that it would not be long before a Christine Ohuruogu situation emerges with one of England's biggest footballers. Agents fear that if it is imposed to the letter of the law it could lead to a string of missed tests by footballers and could even spark legal disputes over lost earnings.

Tomorrow anti-doping experts from around the world are gathered in Athens for the third day of a European Union summit designed to hammer out some of the outstanding issues around the new code. Meanwhile, the Wada director general, David Howman, is seeking a meeting with the Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, in the coming days in an effort to find some common ground in a high-profile spat between the two bodies that looked like it was inching towards resolution in the past fortnight when Fifa's chief medical officer, Prof Jiri Dvorak, insisted it was compliant with the code. Blatter, however, has been quoted as saying that the global anti-doping organisation was acting "like a police organisation" and that was "wrong".

The new regime will be launched into a global drug-testing environment that has been rocked by the row over its implementation and spiralled into a debate about human rights and privacy, the European Commission warning the code breaches rules on data protection. A handful of high-profile athletes, including British tennis No1 Andy Murray, lined up to condemn the rules and potential legal challenges in national and European courts have forced Wada to issue a string of statements insisting it will stand firm.

The stakes were raised when Fifa, whose president Blatter sits on the Wada committee that drew up the rules, and Uefa earlier this year came out publicly against their implementation. They argued it should be enough that players are made available at their training grounds and point to an existing regime that sees between 25,000 and 30,000 players tested a year. Only if a player has previously tested positive, or if they are injured for a long period, should they be tested out of competition, argued the football authorities. Howman, attempting to calm troubled waters, refused to hit back in public, telling the Guardian that Wada doesn't "have any argument with Fifa at present in relation to the practice of anti-doping". But he added: "The bottom line is that all athletes no matter what sport or what country are subject to testing 24/7".Wada argues that, if there is to be an effective co-ordinated effort against drugs, players must simply accept the principle of out of competition testing as one of the prices they pay for competing at the top of their sport. But the player's unions that have been lobbying against the new rules for almost a year sense they are gaining traction.

"Sport needs a Wada but we need a Wada that polices by consensus, not by diktat," said Simon Taylor of the Professional Players Federation. "Wada is supposed to act for sport, not against sport. It's made players into the enemy rather than allies. Wada has picked a fight on something that is both morally and legally very dubious."

UK Sport, which has been operating the scheme for four years in some sports, says that it does all it can to make it athlete-friendly. It said today there had been just eight "whereabouts failures" in the last quarter, showing that the system was working. Players, or their representatives, can select their chosen hour between 6am and 11pm by text message, fax or email and change it up to a minute before it starts. In a concession to team sports, Wada has allowed clubs to submit the times for their entire squads.

Andy Parkinson, UK Sport's director of Drug-Free Sport, said it had been having "constructive discussions" with the FA for the last nine or 10 months. "Everything leads us to think that Fifa is compliant and has identified an elite testing pool," he said. "We think everything we have put in place in the UK to date is proportionate. That is the key word."

But Taylor, and the football authorities, are adamant there must be recognition football does not have a widespread problem with performance-enhancing drugs. "We've always been very keen to cooperate on drug testing and we have had thousands of tests since 1978. There's not been any evidence of performance-enhancing drugs and there's only been limited evidence of recreational drugs," he said.

That view cuts little ice at Wada. Following a hastily convened summit meeting with the players' unions in January, Howman told the Guardian: "It's a silly conversation for anyone to say their sport hasn't got a problem. One, because it's not true. Two, because you don't know what's around the corner."

As the volume and intensity of top level matches increases, and the demands on players' bodies multiply, some argue it is inevitable that a minority of footballers will be drawn to performance enhancing drugs. Former Wada president Dick Pound said it was naive for professional team sports to assume they didn't have a problem, pointing to the attitude of baseball and other US sports at the turn of the century, before revelations about steroid use came tumbling out. "Talk about having your head in the sand," he said.

"We don't want to be an exception, but we do want the rules to be proportionate," said Gordon Taylor. "It's going to end up like Big Brother if we're not careful. We know where players are for 48, 50 weeks of the year. We agree they should provide whereabouts information if they are injured. But it's whether it's proportionate to have 30 players giving one hour a day, 365 days a year, three months in advance. Are we going to end up in a situation where players are followed by a camera 24 hours a day?" Wada will evaluate the new code at the end of the year and then take a view on whether sports are fully compliant. Ultimately, it has suggested, football could be kicked out of the Olympics if it refuses to comply with the new rules.

On a national level, the Football Association has been told by UK Sport that government funding for grass-roots initiatives could be affected if it does not cooperate. UK Sport insists it is on track to meet the 1 July deadline, although Parkinson conceded it may take two or three months to introduce the new system. The mood music coming out of the FA does not tally with that view and, before Rooney and co pack for their summer holidays, something will have to give.